Gossip - A Joyful Noise

Unlike some fans, we're not opposed to Gossip's ongoing shift from punk to pop. Beth Ditto has a huge, expressive voice, and her bandmates have a great track record for coming up with hooks to complement it. However, hiring one of the guys from UK pop production team Xenomania for A Joyful Noise wasn't the smartest move; the results turn out to be lifeless instead of uplifting and accessible as they'd hoped.

What makes this failed experiment all the more frustrating is that it often comes really close to actually working. Producer Brian Higgins gets decent results when the band goes for an early 80s NYC club sound on tracks like Into The Wild and Melody Emergency, but his attempts to mould them into the kind of act that could fit onto the pop charts in 2012 just don't sound genuinely modern enough. Punk roots aside, what Gossip really need is a knob-twiddler who understands contemporary club sounds, not someone most famous for helping write Cher's I Believe and crafting songs for UK reality show winners Girls Aloud.